


Always, All Ways

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Swanfire - Freeform, Tallahassee - Freeform, baby!Henry, swanfire au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd always said their home was in Tallahassee, and with or without Neal, Emma's going to take her son and find her home. Swanfire AU where Emma didn't put Henry up for adoption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always, All Ways

Henry isn’t crying.

It’s never not going to unnerve Emma how quiet her son is: he never seems to cry unless he’s actually hungry, or uncomfortable, or in need of a change. She’d heard horror stories from other mothers about how she’d never have a moment’s peace, not to mention losing any time she was used to having to herself. There had been more than one mother in minimum-security prison, during her pregnancy, and they’d all had their war stories.

None of that had mattered then: she’d been certain on her decision to give him up for adoption. She’d repeated it to herself every day, under her breath: this baby wasn’t hers, not her child, not her family, she was just holding him until his real mom came to find him. No child of hers would ever be left by the roadside. She’d had to wonder then whether her own mom had been in a similar situation, when she’d decided to leave her own daughter in the woods for dead.

Then she’d held Henry in her arms, and she’d fallen harder in love than she’d ever been in her life. Emma doesn’t miss her alone time. After eighteen years by herself, alone no matter who was sat beside her, the knowledge that this little person is all hers still knocks her breathless.

They cross the state line into Georgia, and Emma feels herself smiling. The sun is shining bright and hard, and even with the bug’s fan going full blast, it’s still warm inside the car. She reaches over to Henry’s car seat, and tickles his stomach with her fingers, the sound of his gurgling laughter sweeter than any music she’s ever heard.

“One more state to go, kid,” she says, to Henry and to herself, because at eighteen she might be a mother and a legal adult but she can’t think of herself as a grown-up. Neal was always the grown-up between them, a little older and more savvy, his ID real and his eyes full of mischievous wisdom, but Neal’s gone now. Emma and Henry both need a mother here, so she can be his mom, and she can be her own mom, and maybe they’ll make it in the end.

If there’s one thing Emma’s learned from being a runaway and a single mom, it’s that you can only rely on yourself. If Neal won’t promise to take her to Tallahassee, to take her home, then she’ll damn well keep it to herself.

“You’ll like Tallahassee,” she says, and Henry makes the little burbling sound he often makes when he hears his mother’s voice, so she takes that as assent. “It’s got a beach, and it’s always sunny, and I’m not wanted for anything in Florida so we should be safe. I’ll get an actual job this time, something fun where I can make some money and a real home for us. You’ll go to a good school, and you’ll go to college, and we’ll be happy and comfortable in the sun forever.”

She’s rambling now, sketching out her plans before her, trying to imagine them said in a voice more authoritative than her own. Neal could make her believe it. But then, Neal is a dirty lying bastard who abandoned her and their kid all alone in the world, so he’s not the best standard to measure up to.

Emma uses the money they have sparingly, and it’s warm enough to sleep in the bug at night. She’s glad the hospital had a carseat they were willing to donate to her, or else Henry would have no place else to sleep. Emma never wanted her kid to suffer the way she has, homeless and alone and lost in the world, but she’s also too selfish to let him go. She can’t abandon herself alone either, and Henry’s the only person in the whole world right now who cares if she lives or dies. 

There’s a gas station on the Florida border. Emma stops in, the sign on the state boundary visible from where she’s parked, and stops in to fill up before they go on.

She has enough money for gas but not for food, so she slips some beef jerky under Henry’s blanket in his carseat as she crouches to fuss over him. She’s glad, at least, that Henry nurses well so she doesn’t have to buy baby food yet. Buying diapers and clothes for him is already chipping away at what money she has, and she needs something for a motel room once they reach Tallahassee.

“The guy at the counter’s an eagle-eyed bastard,” a voice, achingly and impossibly familiar, comes low in her ear. “I wouldn’t try stealing from here.”

She springs to her feet and jumps back, almost tripping over Henry in the process, her mind spinning, her mouth hanging open. Her world splinters and shatters around her, reforming around a face she knows very, very well, and she instinctively shields Henry with her body. 

“ _Neal?_ ”

\---

“Emma!”

Neal’s voice follows her to the bug, but Emma doesn’t look back. She hears the shopkeeper yelling something at her, then the sound of someone slapping his money down on the counter. The door slams behind her, and there is silence for a second but for the traffic noise as she marches for the car. If she can drive away then this isn’t real, it’s just a dream, and she has the whole life she planned in prison ahead of her. A life alone, with her son, by the beach. A life without the former lover who’d abandoned them rearing his head and ruining everything all over again.

“Emma wait a minute!” Neal shouts, but Emma keeps going, relentlessly.

“Come on, kid,” she murmurs, under her breath, “Come on, let’s just go, we’re almost home, almost safe, come on.”

Henry’s eyes are wide, fearful, and she knows he doesn’t like to be jostled, knows even babies as little as he is can sense when something’s wrong. She shoves the carseat into the passenger side, and then, only then, does Henry start to cry.

“Oh, oh sweetheart, it’s okay, shhh,” she soothes him, desperately, his father gaining on them. “It’s all okay, we’ll be off soon, just please calm down…”

“Emma,” Neal says, with a sigh, as he comes to a stop beside her. “I… you kept him.”

She doesn’t think it’s what he meant to say, but his eyes have landed on his son’s little head and he looks stunned, awestruck, speechless. He looks like he wants to hold onto Henry and never let go, and Emma’s mouth fills with fear and bile because she can’t allow that, not now: Henry isn’t Neal’s child to raise, to love, not when Neal abandoned him before he was even born. Neal can’t be trusted with something so precious as Henry. Neal can’t be allowed to take him away from her.

“Neal, I swear to God, say one more word and I will shove you into oncoming traffic.”

“I found you, Emma,” Neal breathes, as if he didn’t even hear her. “Oh, God, and you’re okay. You’re okay and you kept him and… I can’t believe I found you.” His face breaks into a heartbreaking grin, ecstatic. Emma’s hand connects with his face without conscious thought, and slaps him so hard he reels back, his hand reaching unconsciously to cover the red place where she hit him.

“You left us,” she accuses, flatly. It’s not an emotional thing for her anymore: he left, and she remained. It’s just a fact of her existence, as commonplace as the red dust beneath their feet. “You have no right to come back now. How… how the hell did you even find us?”

“I… I was looking,” he promises, “Emma I swear I was looking for you.”

“Not very hard,” she snaps, “I was in the same place for nine months, Neal. How hard did you look?”

“I… I didn’t start right away,” he admits. “Emma, I am so, so sorry for what I did-”

“Save it,” she snaps. “I don’t need your apologies any more than we need you at all.”

“But I need to apologise,” he begs, “Please, Emma…”

It’s so surreal: she’s imagined this a thousand times. Neal finding her, saying he’s sorry, falling as in love with Henry at first sight as she did. Her fighting him, saying everything she needs to say, telling him he can’t have another chance, she can never trust him again. Hurting him as deep as he hurt her. She’s imagined this a thousand times, but in those dreams she was older, settled, clearly moved on. In those dreams she felt like an adult, well and truly over the asshole who broke her heart and left her pregnant and incarcerated for his crime.

In those dreams she wasn’t eighteen, homeless, skinny from malnutrition and trying desperately to support a newborn. 

“You left us,” she repeats, and she hates the rough tone to her voice, the tears clogging her throat. “I loved you, and you abandoned us. You can’t just come back now. You don’t have the right to say sorry. You don’t have the right to feel better or to make it right. Please go now. I need you gone.”

“I know… Emma I know, and I’m sorry. But I want to make it right, I do, please.”

“ _Sorry_  would have been good before you left me behind!” Emma all but shouts, “ _Sorry_  would have been good  _before_  you called the cops on me, got me arrested, and then left me alone and pregnant!” She slams her hand on the car for emphasis, and Henry’s wailing starts up again. “Oh, God,” she moans, and reaches down to him, clipping him out of his carseat to rock him, soothe him. He quietens in her arms, as she bounces him on her hip. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she murmurs to him, “Shhh now, mom’s got you, it’s okay.”

Neal gapes at them, his hands clenching at his sides, lost for words and helpless. Emma hates him in that moment, hates him for his helplessness, for his cowardice, and for the fact this child, all she has in the world, is as much his as he is hers. “What’s his name?” Neal chokes out. “Emma, what’s his name?”

“Henry,” Emma tells him, with as much dignity as she can muster. “ _My_  son’s name is Henry.”

“Can I-” Neal reaches out for him, but Emma steps back, cradling Henry’s head in her hand, keeping him well out of his father’s reach.

“No,” she snaps, protectively. “No, you can’t. You have no right to him. What are you even doing here, Neal? You didn’t care before.”

“I couldn’t stay away,” he tells her, as if that means anything to her at all. “I… Emma this is gonna sound crazy, but I thought you were safe. I thought I was doing what was best for you.”

“By abandoning me?” Emma demands, incredulously. “What were you protecting me from that  _that_  was your answer??”

“It doesn’t matter, I just… I thought the cops would chase me, not you. I didn’t call in the tip, I swear, Emma I swear I didn’t. And the moment I found out about Henry, I…”

“You hightailed it back from Phuket to take him too?” Emma demands. Neal’s face creases.

“Emma I was in Vancouver,” he tells her. “Where the hell is Phuket?”

“The key you sent me in jail… For the bug, I… I waited for you. I was waiting for you to come get me, to come save me, and then I got the key and I knew… I knew you were gone.” She shakes her head, confused and lost and unable to do this right now, or ever. He was gone, lost to memory, consigned to a safe, bitter box in her head where he couldn’t hurt her anymore. Knowing he looked for her is almost worse than thinking he didn’t care: the outcome was the same after all. She was still alone, still abandoned, still lost and scared, and he knew her. He knew better, knew that that of all things was her worst nightmare. 

“That wasn’t me,” he promises, “That wasn’t… someone else told me you would be in danger if I stayed. He must have done that.”

“So you abandoned me out of nowhere, pregnant, in jail, because some random  _stranger_  told you to?” She backs further away from him, and puts Henry back in his carseat, unable to speak for fury and grief and incredulity alike. “You know what, Neal? Go to hell.”

“I’m sorry, Emma, I said I was sorry and I’ll say it a thousand times!” Neal cries, as she rounds the front of the car and hauls the driver’s side door open. “I didn’t know, I swear, or I’d have come back! I never wanted anything more than to be with you. It broke me to think you were gone, that I’d lost you and our child forever. I’m so glad I’ve found you, I’m so very glad.”

“You  _didn’t_  find me, though.” she reminds him, rounding on him, ready to drive away at any moment. “By some twist of my terrible luck, you bumped into me on the road. It’s not the same thing.”

“I knew you’d come to Tallahassee,” he tells her, fervently. “I went to Phoenix, but they said you’d already left town, headed East, so I didn’t know where else to look. I hoped you’d go there eventually, so I was coming to find you. I was going to search the city, the state, the whole damn  _world_  from the bottom up until I found you. I’d have done  _anything_  to find you. I just got lucky, and you found me first.”

“It’s too late,” she tells him, openly crying now and unable to stop, hating herself and him too for this, for all of it. She’d been okay, she’d been coping, she’d been brave and on her way and now… now it was all shot to hell again, because she’d never stopped loving him, she’d never gotten over him, and his return is both the worst and the best thing that’s ever happened to her. And now he’s stood there in front of her, saying all of these wonderful, terrible things, and Emma’s only a lost girl at heart, still a kid, still just eighteen and all alone. “Neal it’s too late. I can’t do this again, I can’t… I…”

“Emma,” he murmurs, and she’s so weak, weak and fragile and so very alone, because when he opens his arms to her she steps into them, and she sobs into his shoulder as he holds her close, rocks her, as if the last year never happened and they’re still together, still happy, still in love and almost home. It isn’t enough, it doesn’t make her believe him or trust him, and it doesn’t mean she won’t get in her car and drive away without a backward glance. It doesn’t change a thing, but his arms around her have always felt like home, and Emma Swan hasn’t had a home in such a very, very long time.

“Our son is beautiful,” he tells her, his face pressed to her shoulder, hers buried in his chest. She thinks he might be crying too. She doesn’t know how to fix it, how to want this, how to make everything better again. She wants him to leave and never come back, because she hates him more than she can stand and he’s hurt her in more ways than she can count. She wants him to stay forever, because trying to breathe without him this past year has almost killed her.

“I know he is,” Emma weeps. “I know he is.”


End file.
